Just wrapped up is a closed door event called WarnerMedia Upfront which acts as a showcase for content from the conglomerate meant for the media and advertisers, but arguably the most important part of it was meant for the public as HBO Max With Ads was announced to launch just next month.

From 1st June 2021 the streaming service will launch for $9.99 (~R140.16) per month. As you may have guessed by the name “HBO Max With Ads” is simply the HBO Max streaming service that is cheaper in exchange for serving viewers adverts.

As a point of comparison the regular, ad-free HBO Max is $14.99 (~R280.46) per month right now.

It’s not a mystery that one of the biggest problems with HBO Max – ads or not – has been a lack of availability outside of America. For us in South Africa, and most of the world, the service has simply been unavailable.

We were hoping that WarnerMedia Upfront would be a great place to announce wider availability of HBO Max in both of its forms, but this is unfortunately not the case.

For those lucky enough to access the streaming platform it’s also been shown that there will be new types of ads to grab your attention. Mention was made in the presentation of “Pause Ads” and “Branded Discovery”.

While not much further information was provided about these advert types, they seem self-explanatory. Pause Ads seem like adverts you see when you pause whatever you are watching, and Branded Discovery will be a discovery page to show you new content based on a company paying for advertising.

There are also promises that HBO Max With Ads will offer “the lower ad rate in streaming” and a “best in class ad experience”. We guess we’ll only be able to judge that when it launches which, for South Africans, is some nebulous time in the future, if at all.

The rest of HBO Max

Leading up to the announced launch of HBO Max With Ads we also got some sneak peaks at the streaming service which is claimed to have more than 100 “Max Originals“, a fancy branded term for original programming.

Of particular interest to us was a few brief seconds of the upcoming show Peacemaker, based on the character of the same name played by John Cena in the upcoming James Gunn movie The Suicide Squad.

Not much, if anything, has been revealed about this show and we’re not even sure if the snippet we saw had anything to do with the show or was simply taken from the movie. Again we’ll have to wait and see.

WarnerMedia made a big noise about upcoming specials it has in the forks including the reunion of Friends, the second season of the Kaley Cuoco-led show The Flight Attendant and new series based on Gossip Girl and Sex in the City.

All these projects were public knowledge before the showcase so we were just shown very brief glimpses of each project. Unfortunately we can’t actually show you any of the footage, but to be 100 percent honest, you’re not missing much.

Almost all of what we saw was blink and you’ll miss it scenes that will likely work their way into trailers and promos soon, so be on the look out.